Family Portrait

Henry Walton's portrait of an unidentified family presents three children flanked by their parents, all seated on a wooden bench; a verdant landscape and clear, pale sky form a backdrop redolent of the promise of beneficent nature. All five figures are stiffly, even primly posed in the manner of so-called folk painting, the naïve, simplified style that prevailed in American portraits made in rural New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. Consistent with this style is the symmetrical arrangement of the family members: the mother and father, in complementary black-and-white formal garb, frame the three children, the oldest at the center in her striped pink gown balanced on either side by her blue-clad siblings, whose arms are interwoven with their parents'. The baby on the mother's lap might be a girl or a boy, for nineteenth-century dress made no distinction between genders until after about the age of seven.

Visual family records such as this were in demand in upstate New York in the 1830s and 1840s, when Walton lived and worked there. His provincial clients valued faithful recording of material detail over penetrating psychological reality, the expression of wealth and social status above individuality. Notwithstanding his flourishing career as a painter of topographically correct town views and landscapes, Walton's occasional outdoor portrait settings are artificial and idealized. In this work, the sheltering branches of a tree beyond the father in the right distance underscore his role as head and protector of the family.

Walton was a talented painter of miniature portraits, typically likenesses of a single individual seen from the shoulders or neck up. In this intimate group portrait he rendered each figure on the same scale as a miniature portrait, and he used the miniature techniques of stippling (applying paint in tiny spots) and remarkably fine linear detail to paint faces and hair. Miniatures were painted as portable works that could be concealed in a pocket, a bag, or one's hand. This group portrait, however, probably was intended to be framed and hung, a highly prized adornment in the family home of these unidentified representatives of a prosperous provincial citizenry.

Two Centuries of American Folk Painting, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, February 10–April 21, 1985.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

Domestic Bliss: Family Life in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–June 22, 1997.

New Faces, New Places: Recent Additions to the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 14–December 31, 2000.

A Rich Simplicity: Folk Art from the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 7–September 21, 2003.

Visages de l'Amérique: de George Washington à Marilyn Monroe (Faces of America: From George Washington to Marilyn Monroe), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2004 (on exhibit partial run: April 1–July 5, 2004). [exh. cat.]

Lyon, Christopher. "American Folk Painting Comes of Age at Terra." Chicago Sun Times (March 10, 1985). Text.

Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. Faces of America: Portraits of the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, 1770–1940. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text p. 34 (checklist); ill. p. 43 (color).

Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. Visages de l'Amérique: le portrait dans la collection de la Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1770–1940. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text p. 34 (checklist); ill. p. 43 (color).